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Community Survival Forum Opening the Doors of Heaven and Hell (6/20/05) At the Posthuman Blues site, Mac Tonnies quotes my opening lines, "There is a large and growing potential for global societal breakdown and a descent into chaos — Apocalypse, in a word," etc. etc.; and then Gerald T weighs in (at 4:15 a.m.!):
This is interesting. Not so much for the conclusion that the "trans dimensionals" are monsters and slavers, as for the intuition — which has long been buzzing in my brainstem, too — that the world is about to be reformatted in a very unsettling manner indeed. Actually, I would say "deformatted." My sense is that, when the Baseball of Civilization meets the Bat of Apocalypse, and the seams split and the cover comes off, then we're going to get right down to core values. Some of those values, and the practices that spring from them, may be nothing but nasty — ever been murderously hungry? — but guess what, the doors of Heaven will be opening, too. What we've been learning, and are now about to be rigorously tested on, is how to distinguish right from wrong, and sane from screwed up. We will have help with that test, but we will have to be willing to open to it. "Protect and shield us from the malevolence of the trans dimensionals" is not the prayer that will be on my lips. Jody writes from Hawaii with this (6/12/05): Ducks - I don't know how it got started, but Paul Tillich, the late son of theologian Paul Tillich, was founder of a psychotherapy group practice here in Honolulu whose members I knew socially; and they would put together a year-end mix of their answering machine messages to each other, summing up the year. The one I heard had the recurring theme that "It all comes down to ducks." Charley Sweet responds: Those in the psychological and religious establishments have been slow to see the light on this; but clearly, Tillich and his group experienced a nice little awakening — must have been something in the air there. Apocalypse Lite? (6/01/05) Tom Karmo writes (5/29/05): Today I read Jim Kunstler's Long Emergency in full. I also read perhaps 80% of your own Web site, leaving out essentially only your detailed notes on social prophets and your mysterious section on ducks. [Ed. Note: quak!] Yes, you are right. The signs that we are headed for major trouble are convincing. Perhaps we will, as you yourself think, suffer an apocalyptic breakdown. Perhaps we will instead, as Jim Kunstler thinks, enter a not-quite-apocalyptic Dim Ages. Privately, I am inclined to side with Jim Kunstler, but I recognize that there is an element of subjectivity in that verdict. Oregon Bill writes (5/29/05): I moved to a small, rural town 10 years ago and started building my "lifeboat", so I'm pretty well tracking with your discussion. These days I'm working with a small group of other people in town to start increasing local food and energy production and doing what we can to prepare the community, which is difficult when you can't come right out and tell people what you're preparing for...as you say, most people just are not going to listen…. The real question of course is what ultimately goes down, the "hard crash" or the "soft crash". I know Ran Prieur and many others see it as a gradual crumbling. My personal gut feeling is it's going to be more of a slow slide to a trigger point where the system will become chaotic, at least in North America where I am, so I'm trying to prepare for both. Jim Kunstler adds (5/30/05): In my book, "The Long Emergency" I tried to describe events "realistically." I don't know how bad it might get -- but for me these days, the operative factor is how delusional American society is. Charley Sweet responds: We each expect a major dislocation, but none of us knows how major. Even the most reluctant prophets, comfortably ensconced in the mainstream (I’m thinking of people like Steven Roach and Robert Gagosian), think we’re in real trouble. The timeframe varies; but whether you’re talking economics or the environment, this decade will be crucial. So why aren’t more people, and their governments, getting off the dime? It’s the delusional factor, for sure. No one in a position of authority wants to admit, much less shout out, that the sky is falling. Our only hope, as they see it, is to maintain stablility and muddle on through. And that is the program they are selling. But what if our only hope — our only real avenue to continued human survival — is to let the sky down on ourselves and see what’s on the other side? |